The California advertising tax has been revived in a desperate attempt to help California’s budget crisis. AB178 was tabled earlier in the year, but they just added the anti-affiliate nexus language to the budget bill which could be voted on as early as this week.

Karen Garcia from GTO Management is organizing a group to go to the capital this morning to lobby against this bill. Her blog has more details about what you can do to help fight this anti-affiliate legislation. AB178 Nexus language added to CA budget bill

Both Commission Junction and Linkshare sent affiliates emails over the weekend about the issue. A member of our forum posted both the CJ email and the Linkshare email. They each provide letter templates for California residents to send legislators right away.

Amazon just sent an email to affiliates stating that if the advertising tax passes in North Carolina they will be dropping affiliates. If the bill passes in California and Amazon drops affiliates here – what legislators don’t realize is EVERYONE will lose! Affiliates will lose income plus possibly go out of business or leave the state. Amazon will lose affiliate driven revenue. The state will NOT get the Amazon sales tax PLUS the state will lose income tax revenue from affiliates who have had their income reduced. Lose. Lose. Lose.

If you live in California use the resources in the links above to show your opposition to this anti-affiliate sales tax legislation.

UPDATE: Amazon sent a letter to the state saying they would indeed drop CA affiliates if the bill is passed. That would mean as I speculated – the state would not get the Amazon sales tax revenue PLUS would lose income tax revenue from affiliates that have their income cut.